THE MINERAL NEWSLETTER OLUME O OVEMBER Show and Tell · way to "hope." Quotes include "Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope," from his August 28, 1963, speech at the Lincoln

Crystals are the flowers of the Mineral Kingdom

Is this Newsletter Deja-Vu? No, but due to a last-minute change in program for last month's meeting, our Show and Tell meeting was moved to this month….SO The program for our November meet-ing is our long-standing tradition for us to spend one of our meetings after the summer break to share stories of our adventures over the summer. Stories about digging. Stories about travelling. Stories about what was left behind for the benefit of others. So the meeting this month will be our time to spend sharing our stories and specimens with others. Please bring specimens and stories to share with the club during our meeting Monday the 28th at 7:45 pm at Long Branch Nature Center, 625 Carlin Springs Road, Arlington, VA. Guests are always welcome! Sue Marcus apologizes for any confu-sion concerning the program last month and hopes that you enjoyed Jessica Si-monoff's fascinating presentation at our

Octber meeting. If you brought specimens and stories for show and tell in October and were preempted, Sue say's. "Come on back, y'all!" Map of our meeting location courtesy Google maps

Show and Tell NVMC Schedule: November 28 Gen. mtg. (NO AUCTION) at Long Branch Nature Center December 19* Holiday Meeting * This is a joint meeting with MNCA 23 January Gen. mtg. 27 February Gen. mtg. 28 March Gen. mtg. and AUCTION at Long Branch Nature Center

Inside this issue:

October Minutes 2

Vice Prez Says Club Officers Community Service

3

October Program & Photos

4

Bishop Ireton HS NVMC show photos

6 7

Club information 8

Martin Luther King Memorial

5

NOVEMBER 2011

VOLUME 52 NO. 9 THE MINERAL NEWSLETTER A l s o f i n d i n f o r m a t i o n o n o u r C l u b W e b s i t e : http://www.novamineralclub.org

Our November

Show

The Northern Virginia Mineral Club had its annual show the weekend of the 12th-13th. It was well attended. Pho-tos below and additional photos on page 7 provided by Sheryl Sims.

Page 2

The Northern Virginia Mineral Club November 2011

THE MINERAL NEWSLETTER

October Minutes

Photos from the Octo-ber meeting courtesy Sheryl Sims. (L) Lois Dowell looks though the club yearbook, (M) min-eral stamps, (R) Amber Wihshi shows rings made by Lois Dowell.

NVMC Meeting Minutes October 24, 2011 By Kathy Hrechka, Secretary President Barry Remer opened the meeting at 8 p.m. He welcomed guest, Peggy Flaxman who is the State Director of the Virginia Science Olympiad. She promoted and solicited club members to get involved with the rocks and minerals section at an upcoming tournament. Interested persons may contact her at [email protected] . Program: Student Jessica Simonoff presented her dis-covery of "Skeletal Galena Crystals from Madan, Bul-garia - Natural or Fake" She also provided compli-mentary copies of a quarterly magazine which she edits entitled, Quarterly ( the vug.com) Magazine. Vol. 4 no. 2. The business meeting resumed after Jessica's presen-tation. Announcements: Pat Haynes mentioned that he was leaving our area in the near future. He will also be attending the New Mexico Symposium. Barry Remer

promoted the Birthstone Commemorative Mineral Stamp sign-up, sponsored by the American Federa-tion of Mineralogical Societies. Club members were encouraged to sign a petition in favor of new birth-stone designed postal stamps. Old Business: NVMC Show Co-chair, Jim Kostka solic-ited club members to sign up to volunteer for our an-nual show at GMU on November 12-13. Jim thanked Alec and Sara Brenner for preparing postcard mail-ings. Ann Seigel reported that she submitted articles to local newspapers. Jim requested club members to donate rocks for kid donations at the "Kids Mini Mines", door prizes, and the silent auction. Exhibit cases are reserved for Lois Dowell and Karen Lewis, Jeff Gruber, and Diane Nesmeyer. Jim packaged flyers for club members to distribute for advertising of our show. The business meeting concluded by 8:30 p.m.

THE MINERAL NEWSLETTER Page 3


Helpful Club Officers

Do you have a question about the club? Contacting one of the following can help:

Club President: Barry Remer

bsbremer @ comcast.net

Vice President - Sue Marcus

r1haskins @ verizon.net

Secretary: Kathy Hrechka

kshrechka @ msn.com (703) 765-3187

Treasurer: Rick Reiber

mathfun34 @ yahoo.com (NEW!!)

Show chairman - Tom Taaffe

rockcllctr @ aol.com

NOTE: There was an error in the last newsletter for the email address and phone number for our Treas-urer, Rick Reiber. Please use the email address listed below and delete his old email address from your ad-dress book.

Vice Prez Says

Thanks to Jim Kostka and Tom Taaffe for a resound-ingly successful Northern Virginia Mineral Club show! Turnout was high--we don't have a final count, though dealers had people 3-deep at their tables on Saturday and steady traffic on Sunday. The silent auc-tion boosted the club's financial resources, too, due to the diligence of Rob Robinson and Jim who organized it. Set up and take down went well, despite a small hiccup on tables on Friday. The Club is grateful to the many volunteers who loaned a hand, shoulder, and muscle to get the work done. We couldn't hold the show without the support from all who volunteered to help with the ticket sales, mini-mine and touch-rock tables, door prizes, and the demonstrators who "occupied" our show to educate the public about the many facets of our hobby. Whether you helped for a hour or for all 3 days, the Club appreciates your in-vestment of time and energy. And to those who spent money, especially on the silent auction, we appreciate your money, too! Special thanks are due to Julia Nord and the Geology students of George Mason University who helped with set up/take down, managed the parking shuttle, and sold delicious goodies. They, too a integral parts of our successful show.

- Sue Marcus

Community Service By Robert Winsor

There are some people that like to give back to the com-munity, but unfortunately most people see community service as something that is more like work, rather than play. However, it can be quite fun if you choose to per-form community service in the right manner. Confu-cious said “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” This does not just ap-ply to your day job. It also applies to community ser-vice. There are many members of the Northern Virginia Mineral Club that have embraced this by serving the community through educational outreach of their won-derful hobby of understanding and collecting rock, min-eral and/or fossil specimens.

If you are a member that really enjoys rocks and miner-als and if you don’t mind teaching, don’t hesitate to take the time to contact a local elementary, middle or high

school and offer to bring part of your collection into their classrooms and teach a class or two (or three, or four) about your hobby. This is hands-on science that far too few of our kids get exposed to. And most teachers would be delighted to have an expert on the topic of rocks, minerals, or fossils in their classroom to cover the material in a hands-on manner with the pu-pils.

Let’s not forget that such community service is also very self-serving - it can be downright fun to see kids react to what they are being taught and shown. The fascination in their faces, the questions that show sin-cere interest, and the satisfaction of knowing that you contributed to the growth of science can be im-mensely rewarding.

So please, don’t hesitate to contact your local school and offer to present your hobby in the classroom. You will be appreciated for it!

Page 4



October Program - The Editor

There were quite a few very good comments about Jes-sica Siminoff’s presentation, “Hollow Galena: Fake or Natural”. So, if you were not able to attend, you missed a good one!

Due to late receipt, this pro-gram was not covered in the October newsletter, but rather the description was emailed shortly before the meeting. Here is the infor-mation about Jessica’s pres-entation:

“Jessica Simonoff started min-eral collecting when she was 8years old. She loves to field collect, go to mineral shows, micromount symposiums and the Rochester Mineralogical-Symposium. At her first Tuc-son show, she was introduced to Mike Wise from the Smith-sonian. He invited her to his lab for a tour of the facilities and in a subsequent visit he assigned her to do a par-agenetic sequence chart for a Polish pegmatite specimen he had acquired. She has been an assistant editor for The Vug magazine for 2 years and an operator in the Mindat chat room for 2 years. She won a first place award for an educational mineral case at the Gaithersburg Min-eral Show. Her first published paper, “Skeletal Galena Crystals from Madan Bulgaria – Natural or Fake?”, co-authored by Dr. Lance Kearns of James Madison Univer-sity, won the Best Article of the Year in Mineral News. She presented this paper in April 2011 at the Rochester Mineralogical Symposium and It is this research you will hear about tonight."

Pictures from the meeting are shown here.

Photos courtesy Sheryl E. Sims.



By: Kathy Hrechka Photos by Sheryl Sims and Kathy Hrechka A thirty foot high, granite memorial honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was built on the National Mall, situated adjacent to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Me-morial and in a direct line between the Lincoln and Jef-ferson Memorials. It was dedicated on October 16, 2011 to preserve the memory of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968): visionary, faith leader and public intellectual advocate for social justice. In 1984, King's fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, proposed building a na-tional memorial to Dr. King. Fund-raising efforts by the Memorial Foun-dation for the project estimated a cost of $120 million. The memorial would features a 30-foot-high granite statue of the slain leader (called the "Stone of Hope") and two other pieces of stone that symbolize the "mountain of despair." Visitors will pass through the "mountains" on the way to "hope." Quotes include "Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope," from his August 28, 1963, speech at the Lincoln Memorial. Congress passed Joint Resolutions in 1996 authorizing the fraternity to establish a Me-morial honoring Dr. King to be built in Wash-ington, D.C. The ceremonial groundbreaking took place on November 13, 2006, for the Me-morial to be completed in 2011. Master Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin, age 57 and the Dingli Stone Carving Company carved the impressive statue out of 159 pieces of pink Chinese granite. Foun-dation officials requested a pink-hued granite was needed to fit into the National Mall color palette to compliment the cherry blossoms. The locality of the granite is Quanzhou City, China. Mr. Lei, who has in the past carved two statues of Moa Tse-tung, carried out

almost all of the work in Changsha, China. Mr. Lei was com-missioned for the project in 2006, after the memorial's fund-raisers observed him at work at a

stone carver's symposium in Minnesota. Amid the criticism, the architects in charge of the project said that they had visited Mr. Lei's studio in Changsha, in Hunan province to find he had already carved several versions of the work. More than 150 granite blocks, weighing some 1,600 tons,

were then shipped from Xiamen, China to the port of Baltimore, and reassem-bled by a team of 100 workmen, including ten Chinese stone masons brought over specifically for the project.

Since August, about 1,500,000 persons have visited this memo-rial and most of them give praise to the sculptor Lei Yixin from Changsha, China. He spent four years carving this masterful work of art. Mr. Lei was invited White House, and welcomed "Art is

without borders". Author's note: After visiting the memorial, I wanted to learn about the locality of the granite. My internet searches were unsuccessful, so I emailed a couple of granite quarries in China. I compared my photo of the granite to their selection of granites. I found a match at ZONGYI STONE DEVELOPMENT CO., LTD. Elaine <[email protected]> from China verified my granite match and included a photo of the First Family touring the memorial. What was the chance of that? My neighbor, who is a graphic designer was hired by the MLK Foundation to design memorial plaques which included a piece of the rock. He promised to give our geology club mem-bers samples of granite from the memorial.

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial National Park Service, U.S Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C.

Page 6



Story and Photos By Kathy Hrechka

Students in Mrs. Milette's Earth Science courses learned first-hand about rocks and minerals, thanks to donations by Jim Kostka and Patrick Haynes, who are members of the Northern Virginia Mineral Club. Mrs. Kathy Hrechka was a guest speaker in the class teach-ing about the new mineral collection and 12 identical study boxes.

Mrs. Milette in the Library

Bishop Ireton Earth Science Class Studies New Mineral Collection and Study Boxes

Bench Tips

DEPTH GAUGE FOR DRILLING

Sometimes you need to drill a number of holes all to the same depth. One quick and easy way to do this is to wind some tape around the drill bit so that the tape just touches the part surface when the hole is deep enough.

You can do this either by measuring from the tip of the drill to the tape or by drilling one hole correctly, leaving the bit in the hole, and wrapping tape around the bit at the surface level.

CUTTING A BOLT

Whenever you have to cut a threaded bolt shorter, it's al-ways difficult to get the nut to thread back onto it.

And the smaller the bolt, the more difficult this is. The problem is easily solved by screwing a nut onto the bolt before cutting it.

So here's how I do it. Screw a nut onto the bolt, grip the bolt by the piece to be sawed off, saw the bolt to the desired length, taper the end with sandpaper or file, and unscrew the nut from the bolt. Unscrewing the nut over the freshly cut end of the bolt straightens out any damage to the threads. Gripping the bolt by the piece to be sawed off lo-calizes any crushing damage to the piece you're throwing away.

More BenchTips by Brad Smith are at

groups.yahoo.com/group/BenchTips/

Or facebook.com/BenchTips



Photos from the NVMC show, courtesy Sheryl Sims

RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP!

SEND YOUR DUES TO:

Rick Reiber Treasurer, NVMC

PO Box 9851 Alexandria, VA 22304

OR Bring your dues to the

meeting

You can send your Newsletter articles to:

Robert Winsor 35740 Roundleaf Ct. Round Hill, VA 20141

Or via email: news.nvmc @ gmail.com

Visitors are Always Welcome at our Club Meetings.

Purpose: To promote, educate and encour-age interest in geology, mineralogy, lapidary arts and related sciences. The society is a mem-ber of Eastern Federation of Mineralogical and L a p i d a r y S o c i e t i e s ( E F M L S ) http://www.amfed.org/efmls and American Federation of Mineralogica1 Societies (AFMS) http://www.amfed.org."

Dues: Due by 1 January of each year; $15.00 Individual, $20.00 Family, and $6.00 Junior (under 16, sponsored by an adult member).

Meetings are held at 7:45 p.m. on the fourth Monday of each month (except

May and December*) at Long Branch Nature Center, 625 Carlin Springs Road, Arlington, VA 22204. Phone (703) 228-6535. (No meeting in July & August.)

(*Changes announced in the newsletter.) Snow schedule - Arlington county schools.

The Northern Virginia Mineral Club

NVMC Newsletter Editor Robert Winsor

35740 Roundleaf Ct. Round Hill, VA 20141

Phone: 540-751-0922 Please call between 7pm and 9pm E-mail: news.nvmc @ gmail.com

P LEASE V ISIT OUR WEBSITE: HTTP:\\www.novamine ra l c lub.o rg

THE MINERAL NEWSLETTER OLUME O OVEMBER Show and Tell · way to "hope." Quotes include "Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope," from his August 28, 1963, speech at the Lincoln

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